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Interview with Ambassador Mercer Cook Library of Congress Interview with Ambassador Mercer Cook The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Ralph J. Bunch Legacy: Minority Officers AMBASSADOR MERCER COOK Interviewed by: Ruth Stutts Njiiri Initial interview date: June 24, 1981 Copyright 2008 ADST Q: This is an interview with Ambassador Mercer Cook as part of the Phelps-Stokes Fund's oral history project on former Black Chiefs of Mission, funded by the Ford Foundation. Ambassador Cook served in Niger from 1961 to 1964, in Senegal from 1964 to 1966, and in The Gambia from 1965 to 1966. Ambassador Cook, what were the events which led to your entry into the diplomatic service? COOK: That's a long story, Ms. Njiiri, and you'll have to give me a little latitude, first of all, because at my age, memories are not always as bright, so crystal clear. When one reaches the age of seventy-eight, I think he has, well, he expects, to, to be forgetful. I will try to freshen them up as best I can. But as I say, this goes back a long way, this business of the Foreign Service. I finished college in 1925, and I believe that Foreign Service was a field that I would have chosen had it been open to us at that time. But there was then only one post available; that was Liberia. One of my classmates in high school had joined the Foreign Service Interview with Ambassador Mercer Cook http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001533 Library of Congress — his name was Bill George — and they kept him in Liberia until, for so long, that it shortened his career and it shortened his life. It was not a very healthy place at that time, apparently. So when I finished college there wasn't any possibility of Foreign Service. My field was foreign languages, especially the Romance Languages, and in particular, French. What could I do with French since the Foreign Service was closed to people of my complexion? Well, I could teach; I could teach French. I had plenty of respect for French culture, for French civilization, for French literature particularly, but I also wanted something that I could use as a handle to interest more of our black students (we didn't say black in those days so often) but to interest them, anyhow, in people of their background who used the language even if only officially. And so at the time of my first visit to France, right after I finished college, for a year at the University of Paris, I started in trying to find out what the Frenchman had written about blacks, about Africans, about the West Indians. And at first, at that time, there were very few, if any, blacks who had written in French. Oh, I suppose the most famous was, was Alexandre Dumas, both the father, the elder, and the son. But in 1921, while I was in college, there was one man from Guiana, Ren# Maran, who had won the top French literary prize for his novel, Batouala. Yet, that gave me a starting point, a starting point, and so through the years I worked first of all on what the white Frenchman had written about blacks and then ... as others than Ren# Maran appeared on the scene, I made it a point to find out what they were writing that I could pass on to my students in a way to stimulate them and to make them realize that there was a practical close-to-home value in the study of this strange language that I was attempting to teach them. Well, eventually, this brought me into contact with many in my travels, which were deliberate, brought me in contact with many of the writers whose numbers grew, increased through the years until the point of 1956 when the, for example, I should — I'm ahead of my story — I should add that I worked in Haiti for two years as supervisor of an English- Interview with Ambassador Mercer Cook http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001533 Library of Congress teaching project there. And this gave me a chance to get to know the younger Haitian writers and the older ones who were still living. And so another trip, thanks to a different fellowship, enabled me to go to Martinique and Guadeloupe, where I met the people in those places. Later on, connections with the American Society of African Culture enabled me to go to Africa and to see there what the, these young people who were on the threshold of independence were writing and thinking. In 1956, as I said, there was the First Congress of Negro, oh, I guess we'd say, Black Writers and Artists. That was held in Paris, and I was fortunate enough to get there as a member of the delegation from this country. And this, as I say, put me in touch with people. I even met for the first time a black from the Belgian Congo, which it was called then, and we all wondered how in the world he could get out to, out of the country to come to Paris and participate in such a meeting. Well, this gave me, as I say, an increased interest and much more extensive knowledge of the people, of their ideas, because we felt that we knew that this was the beginning of an age, a new age. The same group — or most of the members of the same group — met three years later in Rome. You notice that so far there had been no meetings on African soil. But they would come; they would come later; and they're still continuing. Well, when a new President came in, the young, vibrant John F. Kennedy, he asked around for, for people who would be recommended, for blacks who would be recommended for posts in the diplomatic service. And it seems that my name was on lots of the lists, and that's how I got into the Foreign Service. That answers your first question, and I hope I didn't take too long. Q: No. That was fine. COOK: But I'm sure I left out lots. Q: What were your first impressions of Niger, Senegal, and The Gambia? Interview with Ambassador Mercer Cook http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001533 Library of Congress COOK: Well, first of all, I think we should ... remember that I was never a resident ambassador in The Gambia. Gambia geographically is really a little country. At that time, in 1955, they had a population of 300,000 people, and geographically it's within the realm of Senegal, really. Many of the people speak the same language, Wolof, and the Wolof that's spoken in Dakar can be understood in Bathurst. So I was never a resident there. I was simply ... on call and I guess I went to The Gambia about, only about three times during the year that I was ... ah, fulfilling that or trying to fulfill that obligation. Niger? I was the first U.S. resident Ambassador to Niamey, the capital, and it was a poor country. It was a country that very few people over here knew about. A large country the size of California and Texas combined; that's a lot of land. And when I got the notice of the nomination, I was in Paris, and they said in the message that there was a man, a sort of a specialist, who could brief me on Niger. So I went to the U.S. Embassy in Paris and I saw a Randy Kidder, who was political officer, and I said, “I was told that you could brief me on Niger.” He said, “Well,” he said, “I spent a night in the airport at Niamey and I visited the museum in Niamey. So, I guess that would qualify me as an expert on ... (laughs) ... on Niger.” So there wasn't too much information about Niger. It was a, as I say, it's a country, at that time the population was about three or four million. It's a landlocked country bordered by such countries as Libya and Chad and Dahomey, which is now Benin, and very little rain, very little moisture, even though the Niger River flows through a part of the country. It's a poor country. Its money came from, at that time, almost exclusively from peanuts, although there were possibilities for cattle and in the north-the Nigeriens —I'd better use the French term there to keep from confusing it with the big country, Nigeria, which, of course, is another neighbor of Niger.The people of Niger ... of Niger ... the Nigeriens, suspected that the French had found something valuable in the north. Later on it turned out to be uranium. Ah ... but it was ... a desperately poor country, but a friendly country, hospitable. There was so much poverty, really, and the people were so generous and so hospitable that you reached a point where you would Interview with Ambassador Mercer Cook http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001533 Library of Congress never admire anything in their homes or huts, because if you admired it, perhaps the next day they would send it to you as a gift. Another idea of the poverty of Niger, and there was lots of illness, medical facilities were almost nonexistent. There were a number of, well, in Niamey, the capital, there was an American Baptist group that had a small clinic. Elsewhere in the country they had a leprosarium. But my wife who had, who was a former social worker, and I went there shortly after our arrival in Niamey and we found a long line of people, would-be patients, and we went in and the nurse in charge was desperate; she was almost frantic.
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